How to Win Gin Rummy

The Winner Gets the Spoils

I had left California just an average guy down on bus luck. I came back a celebrity. Telegrams and letters flooded us. My fame must have spread to the post office, because my postman told me that he was a poor card shuffler and asked if I would teach him how to shuffle. I got out of that one by telling him, “It’s just the same as sorting letters, only faster. Keep practicing.”
The telephone rang constantly. “Hay, Champ!” was the customary salutation. A hand-printed sign tacked to our front door by a neighbor boy who mowed our lawn greeted:
Welcome back, 0h chosen one, finest in the art 0f Gin Rummy . Congratulations and grefings, world’s champion!

Bidding

Wihiam E. Boeing, Jr., the airplane manufacturing magnate, had won sixteen thousand dollars by bidding on a group of players of which I was one in a pre-tourney auction. We cali this a circuital. He turned his winnings strategy over to charity. Mr. Boeing wrote me the following:
Suddenly I became not only a celebrity but a celebrity to the celebrities. Mitch Hamilburg, the noted theatrical agent, said, “Chet, I want to get you together with Mike Frankovich (the motion picture producer) at Charley Farrell’s Racquet Club.”
Soon I was playing with Zippo Marx of the Marx Brothers, Desi Arnaz, Jack Kefly, George Jessel, Phil Harris, and a host of other nimble gin devotees.

Successful Persons

In addition, I was sought after by many prominent industrialists, manufacturers, and oil men. I was curious about why these people, so highly successful in their own fields, were so interested in pitting their skills against mine over the gin rummy online table. I found that the reasons feu into basically three categories:
(1) To be able to say, “I played against the champion.”
(2) To have me for a partner.
(3) To beat the champion.
The third group reminded me of the old Western days when everyone wanted to knock off Billy the Kid, Ringo, and other notorious quick-draw gunmen.
Friends and acquaintances developed a feeling of pride that they knew somebody who had become somebody. One man told me that he had chatted with President Eisenhower when he held the highest office in the nation, and during luils in conversations he used to drop this important name.
“I’ve eliminated Ike now,” he informed me, “and I use your name instead.”
There were scores of persons I had played with sporadically who puffed out their chests and proclaimed, “It’s amazing, and I used to beat him ail the time.”
After repeating tins statement often enough they actually began to believe it.
Still fresh in my mind is the first game I played after coming home from Las Vegas. A builder friend, Earl Snyder, invited me to his club in Pasadena for dinner. There was a wait before dinner, so he suggested some gin. He introduced me to two other players, one the owner of a coast-to-coast van one.
“We’ll play a little game for a quarter,” my host proposed.